Tag: vacation

Lessons from Buhari’s health status

Although we have made some progress since the Umaru Yar’Adua episode with incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari writing to the National Assembly of his intention to go on vacation for 10 working days, and passing the baton to the vice president to act while he is away, the point is, we did not criticise Yar’Adua only for not making it possible for his then deputy (Dr Goodluck Jonathan) to take over in his absence. We also took his handlers up for not keeping us abreast of the progress or otherwise of his medical condition. That is what some people have called the attention of the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, to now that he seems to be singing a new tune ostensibly because he is in government and his boss is involved.

No doubt this must be one of the most trying moments for the president’s spokespersons. Alhaji Mohammed, in particular must have seen that it is very easy to be opposition spokesperson than government spokesman, especially at a time like this. Nigerians who keep record have reminded him that he should use the same measure he used in the Yar’Adua days this time around; that is he should also be giving us situation reports of President Buhari’s medical situation. His response is that people should stop comparing apples with oranges. I do not know how that answers the question. Isn’t that obvious?

The president’s sickness, if well managed, should have been used to regain some lost goodwill. That it does not appear to have achieved this is a function of many factors, among which is the way the matter was handled ab initio. To start with, the president was supposed to be on vacation for 10 working days, from January 23 to February 6. But he was hurriedly flown out of the country on January 19, suggesting that he added one day to the 10 days he asked for since he was supposed to be in the office on Friday January 20. This led to speculations that something must have been amiss, and this is natural. There were all manner of speculations since he was flown out until February 5, the day he was expected back in the country, to resume work on Monday, February 6.

Then the bombshell: the president has extended his vacation indefinitely on the advice of his doctors, to enable him undergo further tests and await the results before returning to the country. Many people had thought his return on February 5 would put paid to speculations about his true state of health or even the wicked rumour that he had died abroad. At this point, many of those who were undecided as to whether they should believe the wild rumours now felt naturally too, that there is more to the president’s stay abroad than we were told. This is hardly a crime.

True, President Buhari may not be in hospital; but to the extent that we cannot see him, we have every reason to be skeptical about assurances that there is no cause for alarm. We heard the same thing in the Yar’Adua incident. And those of us who feel this way should not owe anyone any apologies because of where we are coming from. The president’s aides should not expect us to believe them just because they are the ones giving the assurances. In Nigeria, anything is possible. I guess they must have heard the proverb that the person frying groundnuts for the blind must continue to whistle so that the blind would know he is not stealing the groundnuts. Nigerians do not want to be twice beaten; they think once beaten is just enough.

What I am saying is that there is absolutely no point for the spokespersons to embark on the academic gymnastics that they embarked on, like telling us he is ‘sick’ but not ‘ill’; or that he is ‘hale and hearty’. Unless the dictionary meaning of the expression ‘hale and hearty’ has changed, the president is everything but hale and hearty. If he is hale and hearty, then he should be at his duty post.

But one fact we should not lose sight of is that Nigerians are normally compassionate about their leaders, too compassionate to wish them dead, in spite of the suffering most of the leaders have subjected them to. When General Murtala Muhammed was assassinated on February 13, 1976, the nation was thrown into mourning. When General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (rtd) had radiculopathy in the 1990s, many Nigerians made his radiculopathy their radiculopathy. Perhaps the only exception to this was the late General Sani Abacha whose sudden death was greeted with spontaneous jubilation across the country. Even as bad as Abacha was, many Nigerians still commiserated with him when he lost his first son, Ibrahim, in an air crash in 1996. Only a few people asked questions as to what the young man and his friends were doing in the presidential plane that crashed, killing him and his friends who were frolicking in it at Nigeria’s expense. I have no doubt that Nigerians would have empathised with the late Yar’Adua if his handlers had not taken them for a ride.

So, why would some Nigerians want President Buhari dead, such that some were said to be celebrating when rumours of his death got to the public space, forgetting that, as Shakespeare said, “death is a necessary end that will come when it will come”? It is a debt we all owe as human beings. May God forgive them.

But that cannot be the end of the story. People have different reasons for reacting the way they did to President Buhari’s rumoured death and we would not be doing ourselves any good by merely scratching the surface of the matter.  Anyone who expected that a government like Buhari’s, with its tough posture on corruption would not have a lot of enemies to contend with, especially in a country like ours that is ‘fantastically corrupt’, must be joking. I wonder why we took on the former British Prime Minister David Cameron when he so described us the other day. Corruption will always fight back and spreading rumours about the president’s death could be part of the expression of such frustration with his anti-corruption posture. I have always said that corruption is sweet and no one who has a sweet thing in his or her mouth spits it out willingly.

Again, there are some others who just felt so disappointed with the government because of its inability to meet the great expectations they had when voting the president in 2015. No matter the number of pro-government rallies that may be staged, the truth of the matter is that President Buhari has lost so much ground in his popularity rating as a result of this. And that was what some of us saw some months back when we started hammering on the need for the government to make hay while the sun shines. As I said before, the Buhari administration must do something unique to win back some of these genuinely disillusioned people while it still matters. The government should not be under the illusion that things are still as they were six or 12 months ago with regard to the place of the government in the hearts of Nigerians. No excuse is good enough for a man who cannot afford to cater to the needs of his family. Many Nigerians are in this position today. And they are looking up to the government to better their lot. But that still should not be enough justification to wish the president dead.

If only President Buhari understands how angry many of us are whenever the vultures that ate the country to the bone say they are coming back (I mean the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP people), he would put his government in the fast mode.  These are people who should bury their heads in shame; that is for those of them who are lucky not to be in prison or even in their graves because that would have been their fate if they did half of what they did in a place like China. It insults our sensibilities that these people have the audacity to keep dreaming of returning to power. Apparently, they have not been taught sufficient lesson about why they should live decently.

All said, I wish the president quick recovery. For now, he may not have breached any law. But for how long can he be away from duty? This question is pertinent, first to avert a recurrence of the Yar’Adua experience, and secondly, because the constitution talks about the holder of the office of president or governor quitting when it becomes obvious that he is incapable of performing his duties. What this means (I guess I am right), is that the holder of the office cannot be away from work indefinitely on whatever grounds. I pray the president’s situation does not get that bad because, in spite of everything, that would be bad for the anti-corruption war in particular and the country in general.